Christina Barrios and Connie Cervantes show affection to their dog, Ladie. Barrios and Cervantes are a young lesbian couple who are homeless and living in Fort Collins. / Sean Lara/The Coloradoan

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Christina Barrios and Connie Cervantes play with their pitbull, Ladie, whom they refer to as their daughter, outside of the Sister Mary Alice Murphy Center. / Sean Lara/The Coloradoan

Youth statistics

While little data has been collected on adults, of the estimated 1.6 million homeless youths today, an estimated 20 percent to 40 percent self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

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Being a couple is complicated. Being homeless is hard. Christina Barrios and Connie Cervantes are both.

The young lesbian couple met in a Colorado residential treatment facility, Excelsior Youth Center, but didn’t develop the friendship that would turn into their relationship until months later.

Barrios, 21, had been treated for “severe anger management problems,” which eventually led to drug use and gang activities; Cervantes, 19, for depression and the beginning stages of schizophrenia.

After reconnecting on Facebook when both were discharged from Excelsior, the couple said they “spoke on the phone constantly” and arranged a meeting. Barrios traveled from Colorado to California, where Cervantes lived with her family.

They decided to start a life together in Colorado with Cervantes’ family’s blessing and a settlement from Cervantes’ successful lawsuit against a residential treatment facility. But when they made the voyage to what was supposed to be a new life, financial plans fell apart when the couple learned they could only receive the funds in a monthly installment of $200 — preventing them from getting off the ground in Colorado.

Cervantes and Barrios found themselves living in the back of a car, using the stipend and money from a variety of odd and part-time jobs to pay the bills.

“We had to rely on my resources and my smarts of the streets to survive,” Barrios said. “Please don’t judge us just because we can’t always find a shower.”

They have stories of kindness amid the hardship: An “angel in disguise” who paid to fix their car when it broke down. Another who helped the couple upgrade to the larger SUV they now share with their pitbull, Lady, and two other homeless friends.

Living in small quarters can be hard. Their clothes are organized in plastic bins. Although they have enough blankets to keep warm even on the coldest nights, Barrios wishes she could give her “baby girl” a better life.

“My OCD kicks in because I don’t want anything to remind me that I’m homeless,” Barrios said. “Homelessness is hard for me because I don’t like the fact that I have nowhere to eat my dinner.”